Exploring America Archives - Page 3 of 7

Finally Sharing RV Wanderlust Travel Plans for 2017

March 28, 2017 by BrittanyHighland 21 Comments

Some of you have probably been wondering whether we’re ever going to get back on the road. Now that we have a baby with us, maybe we’ll decide to put down roots and abandon the fulltime RV lifestyle.

Eeeek! Even writing that sentence grates my sensibilities like fingernails on a chalkboard. We have been dying to start traveling again!

Let’s backtrack. We arrived in Central Texas at the end of July 2016. I was at the end of my second trimester and needed to be close to my OBGYN for appointments. After Caspian Theodore was born on Dec. 3, 2016, we had to stick around for his doctor’s appointments and vaccinations.

…We were itching to travel somewhere around August.

Oh, we’ve ping-ponged around a bit. San Marcos, Austin, Fredericksburg, Corpus Christi, back to San Marcos. It’s all been good and necessary, but we haven’t sniffed out any new trails in forever.

So we’re definitely traveling again. That’s settled. But when, and to where? Plans for the rest of 2017 are still tentative, but we have an idea of our general route. And we’re ready to share it! [Read more…]

2016 in Review: Stats, Photos, Adventures

January 15, 2017 by BrittanyHighland Leave a Comment

As we enter the month of February, we close out three years as full-time RVers, and enter our fourth year! These stats describe our travels from January-December of 2016, the year of our “Grand Loop Trip:”

Number of States: 8 (6 new states with the RV: Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and Montana)

Number of Overnight Stops: 26

Where We Stayed: 1 BLM dry camping, 1 national forest, 1 national recreation area, 1 county park, 1 state park, 1 service center, 4 parking lots (hotel, restaurant, Walmart), 4 military bases, 12 private campgrounds [Read more…]

We Had a Great Time in Portland, Oregon, But RV Life Isn’t Always Fun

August 10, 2016 by BrittanyHighland 5 Comments

Our site for two weeks at Columbia River RV Park in Portland

After a lovely first week in Portland, OR, our second week was insane. Looking back, I can’t believe we still managed to see and do so much. This is a quirky city with walkable neighborhoods, good food and creative community events. When you want a break from the city, short drives in every direction will take you to scenic landscapes, memorable hiking areas and historic sites. This is definitely a city we’d return to. [Read more…]

Lake Life in Idyllic Ashland, Oregon

June 30, 2016 by BrittanyHighland 2 Comments

Emigrant Lake County Park in Ashland, Oregon

Appreciate your patience with the radio silence! We had a vehicle debacle and an airline fail while we were staying in Portland (some of you may have read the story on Facebook), so we lost a few days of play dealing with real life.

So let’s get back to where we left off, in Ashland, OR, on Memorial Day weekend.

TL;DR: Ashland is charming and a wonderful place to stay. I don’t think we ever would’ve sought it out, were it not for Eric’s years of living in the Pacific Northwest and the fact he had visited a long time ago and remembered it fondly. After our two-week visit together, I’d say Ashland probably makes our Top 5 list of favorite places we’ve been during our RV travels. [Read more…]

RV Park Review: Premier RV Resorts Redding, CA

June 3, 2016 by Eric Highland 4 Comments

Brittany and I have been on an incredible adventure this year. Our faithful readers know we’ve been calling it our “Grand Loop Trip.” For those new to our blog, welcome!

We started from Austin, Texas and we’re currently making our way up to Seattle to visit family for the summer.

Eric Brittany Highland Lassen Volcanic National Park

We found fallen and falling snow only an hour away from Redding at Lassen Volcanic National Park

We like to keep our trips between spots really short. Really short! We typically travel 250 miles every two weeks. So it takes us a long time to get anywhere but, we get to discover little gems we’d never otherwise find. We know other full-time RVers can relate to this.

However, short trips between spots doesn’t mean that we stay just anywhere. On the contrary! Since we’re staying for two weeks at each stop, and quite often in a small town, we take our time choosing each destination carefully.

So, when we were doing our research into places to stay along the I-5 corridor in northern California, we were happy to find the easily accessible Premier RV Resorts Campground in Redding, CA. [Read more…]

Our Favorite Finds in San Francisco and the Bay Area

May 18, 2016 by BrittanyHighland 4 Comments

I had never been to San Francisco, save for a swing through during a family vacation in high school, which involved a foggy drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and a late-night ride on a trolley car. Not quite the full experience. Eric had spent some time in the city a number of years ago, but his expertise was mostly the nightlife scene (as sailors go). Again, not quite the full experience.

So once we were set up at the military campground at TRACEN Petaluma (highly recommended, for those of you with access), we decided to spend the next day in San Francisco. One day there, and we’d both rank it among our favorite big cities. [Read more…]

RVing Through Monterey, CA and Along the Pacific Coast

May 12, 2016 by BrittanyHighland 2 Comments

Partington Cove on Pacific Coast Highway in Big Sur

Pulling into Monterey on April 16, 2016 meant we had officially driven coast-to-coast with Meriwether! I don’t know why, but I was expecting the city to be large and bustling with tourists–closer to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Instead, we found a laid-back marina town that was intimate and in an amazing location for exploring the Pacific Coast. [Read more…]

Sequoia National Park in One Day

April 21, 2016 by BrittanyHighland 4 Comments

Sequoia National Park and co-located Kings Canyon National Park often get overlooked because of their more popular neighbor two and half hours to the north, Yosemite. But after our one-day visit this month, we will be life-long fans. We can’t recommend enough that you visit if you’re ever in the area. The sequoia trees are breath-taking in their size, and their natural characteristics result in a deep respect. We can now say that we’ve seen the largest living thing on earth! [Read more…]

Livin’ Large in Las Vegas, NV

April 13, 2016 by BrittanyHighland 3 Comments

Because of our generator issues and scheduling around Spring Break crowds, we had way too many short stays in a row. For us, short stays are anything less than two weeks. It may sound silly at first, but two weeks goes quickly for us because we work Monday-Friday. When we arrived in Las Vegas, our travel schedule finally started to normalize. We stayed for 11 nights.

We like big cities: the excitement of being around other people, the things to do and (usually) good food to eat. Las Vegas provided a balance because we stayed on the outskirts in a peaceful campground, but we were only 20 minutes from the city center. [Read more…]

Death Valley National Park in One Day

April 4, 2016 by BrittanyHighland 11 Comments

This is our first year of being intentional about visiting all of the National Park Service sites near us as we travel. In the past, we practically drove right past a ton of places because we forgot to research our surroundings. Or–even worse for this slightly-OCD girl–we went, but forgot to get our passport stamp!

One tool has made it simple to track our proximity to NPS sites lately, and that’s the free mobile app, National Parks by Chimani. We use the map view to zoom into our location and see what’s around us. Then we can click on each location for more information. And once we’ve visited, we can record the year we were there. Totally fun for NPS-lovers and list-makers.

Thanks to the app, I know we’ve visited four national parks, three national monuments and one national recreation area so far in 2016. The latest: Death Valley National Park. [Read more…]